Navigating Environmental Attitudes

Thomas A. Heberlein

Provides a scientific explanation of attitudes, how they affect behavior, and why they matter for environmental action

Challenges the common idea that education can easily raise awareness and change attitudes, which in turn will alter behaviors

Provides real-world examples and practical analyses of how to take attitudes into account when making environmental policy

Navigating Environmental Attitudes

Thomas A. Heberlein

Description

The environment, and how humans affect it, is more of a concern now than ever. We are constantly told that halting climate change requires raising awareness, changing attitudes, and finally altering behaviors among the general public-and fast. New information, attitudes, and actions, it is conventionally assumed, will necessarily follow one from the other. But this approach ignores much of what is known about attitudes in general and environmental attitudes specifically-there is a huge gap between what we say and what we do.

Solving environmental problems requires a scientific understanding of public attitudes. Like rocks in a swollen river, attitudes often lie beneath the surface-hard to see, and even harder to move or change. In Navigating EnvironmentalAttitudes, Thomas Heberlein helps us read the water and negotiate its hidden obstacles, explaining what attitudes are, how they change and influence behavior. Rather than necessarily trying to change public attitudes, we need to design solutions and policies with them in mind. He illustrates these points by tracing the attitudes of the well-known environmentalist Aldo Leopold, while tying social psychology to real-world behaviors throughout the book.

Bringing together theory and practice, Navigating Environmental Attitudes provides a realistic understanding of why and how attitudes matter when it comes to environmental problems; and how, by balancing natural with social science, we can step back from false assumptions and unproductive, frustrating programs to work toward
fostering successful, effective environmental action.

"People who have spent their lives dealing with environmental issues from a broad range of perspectives consistently abide by erroneous assumption that all we need to do to solve environmental problems is to educate the public. I consider it to be the most dangerous of all assumptions in environmental management. In Navigating Environmental Attitudes, Tom Heberlein brings together expertise in social and biophysical sciences to do an important kind of 'science education'-educating eminent scientists about the realities of their interactions with the broader public." --the late Bill Freudenburg, Dehlsen Professor of Environment and Society, University of California, Santa Barbara

Navigating Environmental Attitudes

Thomas A. Heberlein

Author Information

Thomas A. Heberlein is Professor Emeritus, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison and Visiting Professor, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Navigating Environmental Attitudes

Thomas A. Heberlein

Reviews and Awards

"Though human dimensions specialists will appreciate such insights, the ideal audience for Heberlein's book would be wildlife professionals who have little exposure to sociology and/or social psychology, but who wish to gain a deeper understanding of these phenomena--and use that understanding for the benefit of natural resources." --Wildlife Professional

"Heberlein's presentation of norms as the key to changing environmental behavior will be used to help guide the analysis of the data collected. Results of this study will be considered within Heberlein's (2012) behavior change guidelines which note the following factors as essential to broad based behavior change: identification of clear and specific behaviors, engagement of high status public leadership, identification of norms consistent with institutional values and adequate time to allow for ideas to evolve and expand." --Journal of Sustainability

"Attitudes and their link to behavior have been of interest to environmental educators and researchers. For this reason, Thomas Heberlein's Navigating Environmental Attitudes should prove quite useful for those interested in understanding what social psychology has to say about environmental attitudes and behaviors... In this book, Heberlein renders a detailed account of attitudes, their structure and relationship to experience; provides insights and principles concerning the relationship and difference between attitudes and behavior; discusses Leopold's land ethic; examines societal norms and their influence on behavior; and explains how societal structures can support existing or introduce new pro-environment attitudes and behaviors... Heberlein's helpful and accessible
explanations of social psychological research should prove quite valuable for anyone interested in understanding more about environmental attitudes and behaviors." --The Journal of Environmental Education

"I fervently recommend this book to anyone working on (or interested in) the environmental sciences, natural resource management, and sustainability solutions. I view Heberlein's book as a masterpiece for anyone interested in understanding why attitudes are--and perhaps more significantly, are not--important for addressing environmental problems. This text should be required reading for any scholar in the environmental social sciences, and perhaps even those in the interdisciplinary environmental sciences." --Society and Natural Resources